I am attempting to locate a passport for my great grandfather, Nunziante CIAMPI. This is what I know. He was born about 1855 in Frigento, Italy, had two children that I know of, born 1879 and 1882. On 21 October 1884, he was murdered in Philadelphia, PA where he was working, presumably as a laborer for the railroad. Believed to have been murdered by a fellow Frigento(ian) who fled back to Italy. I've not been able to find out what happened to his remains or where he is buried, but he was found with a passport on his body. I thought a passport or passport application may help in some way.

Hoping to learn when he arrived in the US, when his mother was born, if he had any more children and whether any justice was served! He appeared to have had a brother born in 1859, Pasquale, if he had any other siblings.

DoloresI had previously posted this on another thread on this forum concerning Italian passports-from Trafford Cole's book on Italian Genealogical Records.:

from the year 1869, and the unification of Italy, any Italian citizen who wanted to travel outside of Italy had to be issued a passport. They could not leave their country without one, although the country to which they were traveling did not necessarily require them to have a passport to enter that new country. So the U.S. did not require an Italian passport to enter this country in the early 1900s, but Italy required its citizens to have a passport in order to leave there. For one thing, the Italian government wanted to make sure that men who were eligible for their draft did not leave the country before they had served in the military there. Another thing was that the Italian government wanted to insure that any of its citizens guilty of a crime did not leave the country.

Now, in order for an Italian citizen to be issued an Italian passport in their country, they had to go to their closest police headquarters with their birth certificates. There the officials would check the names on the certificates. So it was the Italian police who issued the passports. Some Italian citizens requested a passport but never left Italy. Some made multiple trips abroad using only 1 passport. Some actually made two or three requests for a passport before finally setting sail. The records kept by the questura (in the archives of the headquarters of the internal police in each province) are not available to the public.

Every passport request, however, also had to be approved by the ministero degli interni (minister of internal affairs) in Rome. So a list of passport requests and approvals is kept by this ministero in Rome. The problem is that the passports are indexed by town or province for each year, so you need not only the town name but also the year the passport was issued (which may not be the same year your ancestor arrived in the United States). Also these indices do not even contain the actual date of departure from Italy of your ancestor, as he may have requested his passport months before he actually left there. According to Trafford Cole, in his book about researching Italian records, this index contains very little info of actual worth (p.161).

In case you did not see this newspaper article about the pursuit of the murderer...Philadelphia Inquirer, 30 December 1884

In the article it states that the deceased was known by his employer as "No. 25", but that the passport they found was for "Nevaciante Ciampi"

The article outlines the case, and the pursuit of the murderer who they appear to identify in the article as Giuseppi Davino. He had fled to New York and sailed back to Italy and his town.The District Attorney in Philadelphia was planning to return him from there for trial.